


so come down from your mountain

by neverfadingrain



Category: Inception (2010), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Mako Centric, because apparently i have a lot of Mako feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfadingrain/pseuds/neverfadingrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pacific Rim/Inception fusion</p><p>Mako Mori wants to be an extractor, and the only way to do that is to dream with Raleigh Becket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so come down from your mountain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zihna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zihna/gifts).



> So this one is a "happy birthday you wonderful person you" fic for my darling zihna. The title is definitely not from "Babel" in tribute to you. In addition, a million massive thank yous to Kate, Zoe, and Box--who put up with my ranting and ecstatic flailing and edited this thing to within an inch of it's life. And who kindly didn't say anything to me about throwing the entire grammar rule book out the window. I love you guys.
> 
> Minor world-building notes at the end, which are not necessary to the reading of the story but might help a couple things make more sense.

“Initializing Neural Handshake in fifteen,” Tendo Choi says, standing next to the table on which their J.A.E.G.E.R. is situated. Mako is intimately familiar with J.A.E.G.E.R.s, Judgment Awareness and Emotion-Given Evaluation Robots, and with this unit in particular. Gipsy Danger had been taken out of active use when Raleigh Becket had disappeared, when all the other Drift teams that went under with the J.A.E.G.E.R. came back up swearing the machine was haunted. It was given to the scientists to play with and figure out what went wrong, that fateful day almost five years ago. And she had been the one to build it back up again, replacing parts and upgrading the technology until it ran better than ever.

To this day, the Knifehead mission remains one of the Shatterdome’s biggest mysteries. No one knows why Yancy Becket died and his little brother survived, left to support a dream on his own—something that’s _never_ supposed to happen—or why Raleigh had been incapable of dreaming or even _speaking_ in the months between the mission and his disappearance into the Alaskan wilderness. There’s a reason pilots work in pairs, a reason they Drift inside the dream. Mako has long given up hope of puzzling out the answers—Gipsy Danger has no more clues to yield to her, and what few she has make no sense at all—but she suspects that _Sensei_ has a very different opinion.

Maybe that’s why he’s allowing her to Drift with the remaining Becket. Mako has dedicated herself to studying the techniques and the hard realities of dreaming and Drifting alike, logged so many simulator hours Tendo has had to go in and reset the clock for her. Repeatedly. But she has never dreamed with another person before. Part of her is excited.

A larger part is terrified.

She resettles her weight in the comfortable lawn chair under her, gathering her emotions and memories like the clutch of cloth close to her chest, and turns her head to look at the man next to her. Raleigh Becket is a man changed, no longer the cocky forger that had made the Becket Brothers’ Drift Team so successful. He’s older now, more world weary, lying back in the chair like he’s been chained there.

When he looks over, bright blue eyes meet hers. There’s a world of pain swirling in the depths, new hurts mixed in with the old, but there’s something else in there too. Hope.

“Five,” Tendo says.

Newt hovers over his shoulder, voice recorder in hand. He’s using an old somnacin formula today, the closest they can get to what Raleigh used to dream with, and the chemist is here to study what effects a Drift will have on him after five years.

“Four. Three.”

They’re in one of the abandoned research laboratories, situated where no one can find them until they want to be found. Newt and Tendo are the only others in the room. Precautionary measures. _Sensei_ had insisted. But it’s okay, she trusts them both with her life.

“Two. One.”

Mako takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and tries to relax into the fall.

 

\--

 

When she is ten, Mako learns how to hate.

Her father is a gentle man, kind and honest, with an unyielding core like the swords he tirelessly forges. He has been tested time and again, by his profession, by his family, by life itself. He has not bowed under the weight. Masao Mori is Mako’s idol.

Her mother is a simple woman, concerning herself with little outside of making sure their family is provided for, happy and healthy and together. She speaks ill of their relatives, but only where Mako is not supposed to hear. She is beautiful and steady and always has a kind word or gentle smile for someone in need. Sumako Mori is Mako’s inspiration.

And then the Westerner comes.

Clad in a dress so blue it practically vibrates with the color, the lady asks for a sword, the greatest sword Masao has ever forged, and offers a more than satisfactory sum of money for it. Mako sits in her father’s forge for days on end, watching him fold white hot steel and pumping the bellows so the coals don’t go cold. He doesn’t work on any other projects, assured that the money will be well worth the effort. When three weeks have passed and Masao is satisfied, the sword gleams in the light like he has forged a star into it, luminous and unyielding. Mako is in awe of the summation of her father’s talent, his love for his craft infused into the blade.

The Westerner comes back with barely half the money she had promised. When Masao refuses to sell her the blade, she summons the leaders of a local gang.

They seize over half the contents of her father’s shop, everything that can be lifted and transported in the back of a truck. When they finally leave, there is barely enough left to make a single sword, let alone run a business. Masao is heartbroken.

Mako is furious, white hot with righteous fury like she’s been sitting in her father’s forge, untempered steel waiting to be given purpose.

 

Whispers flood through the area for weeks after, following the trail of destruction the Westerner leaves in her wake. Masao is not the only one she has broken; she takes everything a person holds dear and laughs in their despair. No one can stop her. The police are on her payroll, she hears Masao whisper to Sumako when she’s supposed to be fast asleep, there is nothing anyone can do. They are living under the boot of a tyrant, and there is no escape.

The people call her Onibaba, the Hag, the Witch, the One who Cannot be Stopped. Mako never learns her real name, just knows that she hates the Westerner with the fury of a thousand of her father’s swords.

 

\--

 

“—surprisingly good at this,” Raleigh is saying, spinning a Hanbō idly in his hands.

Mako blinks.

They’re in the standard Drift training room, built straight out of her memories by countless hours logged in the simulators, a bare-walled Kwoon with thickly padded floors and a rack of staves in the corner.

The Drift is nothing like what she imagined. All the theory she’d read, all the textbooks she’d memorized, none of it has prepared her for what it feels like to touch minds with Raleigh. It’s an explosion, implosion, stars living and dying behind her eyes and the flicker of fire over steel, plunging into icy depths and a snow white wasteland stretching as far as the eye can see.

It’s beautiful, she thinks, and reminds herself to breathe.

A slow smile curls over her mouth. This part, at least, is familiar. “I have a lot of practice.”

Raleigh is cold where she can feel his mind, shivering and achingly alone, reaching out to her like a child desperate to belong. She reaches back before she can think twice, twining their thoughts together and letting the stream of memories flow behind her eyes. There’s a thrum of thankfulness, like the ring of a hammer on steel, and Raleigh warms almost imperceptibly.

“Guess I have a lot to catch up on, then,” he offers with an impish grin. “Match? And don’t hold back.”

He flickers through a half dozen faces, short then tall then female then _Sensei_ then a blonde man that is achingly familiar to her even though Mako is sure she’s never met him in her life before swirling back into the face he wears in the waking world.

She doesn’t know how to forge, how to change her face until she is someone else. There is no hiding behind polite masks down here. Raleigh sees her as she is, razor sharp and diamond edged, intended to draw blood, accepting no quarter. Mako Mori is darker than he is, fire forged steel and ozone sitting heavy in the air. Mako Mori does not yield.

She grabs a Hanbō from the corner and flows into a fighting stance, smirking across the room. “Okay. I won’t.”

Staff clicks against staff when he moves and she blocks, and it rings like an echo between them.

 

\--

 

When she is thirteen, Mako learns how to hope again.

The Westerner has devastated her village and all the ones surrounding it, leaving behind a blue-tinged trail of devastation like some voracious beast. Masao’s livelihood is gone, beyond hope of desperate salvage, and the rest of the family refuses to help.

 _You got yourself into this mess, taking on a client like that,_ they say over the phone. No one knows that Mako is listening upstairs. She’s supposed to be asleep.

Mako doesn’t like to sleep. Doesn’t like the trail of blue that follows her even into her dreams, tainting everything it touches and turning her thoughts slow with thick, poisonous sludge.

Masao takes on a job in the city, traveling an hour and a half every day to work and earn just enough to put food on the table. Sumako joins in with the other women of the village, working together to clean and cook and support everyone who needs a little help.

And then the unthinkable happens.

Her parents are there one day and gone the next, taken in a bout of fever along with over a third of the village. Countless children end up orphaned and abandoned, with nowhere to go, no hope for the future. Mako is one of them.

Left to fend for herself on the streets and overlooked amongst the sheer numbers of now-homeless children, Mako sneaks and steals and finds ways to get what she needs to survive, each challenge overcome giving her strength and purpose. Like folding steel, heating and shaping and cooling and reheating only to do it all again, Mako slowly molds herself into something to be feared, respected. Something dangerous, something that can give her family the vengeance they deserve.

 This is when she meets Stacker Pentecost.

 

\--

 

The Drift is strong, stable and firm around them. Mako is surprised by just how strong, because the _thwap_ of staff against her side smarts just like in the waking world and when Raleigh wedges his Hanbō in and throws Mako to the floor, the mat is squishy beneath her cheek but the ground doesn’t so much as tremble.

It feels real, is the problem, because nothing Mako’s experienced so far with the Pan Pacific Dreamshare Company has prepared her for this. Raleigh laughs, and the joy in it lightens his whole face, lifts years of worry and guilt and depression from his mind where it touches hers. He forges again, rattling through all the J.A.E.G.E.R. pilots that are still active, ending with a mirror replica of Mako herself.

They dance back and forth across the mats, staves clacking together more often than not. It’s almost magical, the way Mako can see where Raleigh’s going to move before he does it; she makes a defensive lunge while setting her feet for the overhead sweep that Raleigh’s planning next, knows after that she’ll back up a few steps and then spin around to strike at his side, knows Raleigh will block it. She can feel him like an extension of her own body, half-formed thoughts flowing between them where their minds are connected. It’s heady, being this in tune with another person, understanding them on a soul-deep level and knowing you are understood just as deeply in return.

Abruptly, Mako understands what _Sensei_ has always said about Drifting, how addictive it is, how you always come out of it half in love with your partner. She thinks it would be very easy to love Raleigh.

Mako wrenches her Hanbō around at the last minute, too fast for Raleigh to react, and hurls him to the floor with all the strength in her body. He stares up at her, panting, shock and joy and a dawning light in his eyes, and the place where their minds touch reverberates with a soul-deep respect.

Then something moves out of the corner of her eye, and Raleigh goes abruptly still beneath her but Mako’s already moving, swinging her staff defensively as she adjusts to face the new opponent.

It’s the blond Raleigh had forged earlier, looming in the Drift protective and possessive, eyes narrow and completely focused on Mako. _Testing me,_ she thinks, as the blond man slinks into the space created between her and her Drift partner. Raleigh is a shivering ball of shock and denial behind him. Mako can feel the newcomer in the same part of her mind and that, more than anything, is what makes her put the pieces together.

“Yancy Becket,” she says.

Raleigh gives another wordless cry of distress at the acknowledgment, and the Kwoon crumbles around them in an explosion of light and color.

 

\--

 

Fragments of dreams flash through the Drift, barely forming before they’re whipped away again— _he’s laughing and throwing snowballs at his family across a winter wonderland, she’s peering wide eyed into her father’s forge for the first time, he’s crying into his older brother’s shoulder as their mother dies and father drives away, she’s joining the PPDC to avenge all the other families hurt like hers was, he’s young and cocky and Drifting with Yancy for the first time and it’s like he’s finally found where he’s meant to be—_

Then something stutters, and she feels Raleigh latch onto a thought as it whips past, and the earth whirls under Mako’s feet, unsteady, threatening to suck them both into the yawning depths.

 

\--

 

“Don’t get cocky, kid,” she watches Yancy say, lounging against the brick wall outside their latest K.A.I.J.U.’s office with shoulders hunched in his Gipsy Danger bomber jacket against the chill arctic wind. Their mark is a lawyer today, sleazy and corrupt, who’s been stealing from all his clients for the past seven or so years. The rich clients can afford to pay his blackmail prices, but the lower class is not so fortunate. “Anything could happen, so we gotta be ready.”

Mako is Raleigh, wearing the guise of their K.A.I.J.U.’s trophy wife like a second skin, flashing a bright smile at his brother and leaning in closer. The lawyer is due to leave his office any time now, and part of their plan is to get him so angry he can’t think about how he got from his cushy office in Anchorage out to the ocean in a few minutes. “I _am_ ready for anything.”

“Tracy?”

Without missing a beat, he flinches and whips around, faking an alarmed look. “Pete! Oh my _god!_ It isn’t what it looks like, I swear!”

Across their Drift, Yancy rolls his eyes. In the dream, he straightens from his slouch and growls at the lawyer. “Hey! What the hell d’you think you’re doin’? I paid for her for another half hour!”

The scumbag pales and seizes ‘Tracy’s’ shoulder, wrenching her around. Raleigh allows himself to be dragged closer, shooting Yancy a warning look when his older brother growls louder. “What do you mean, you _paid for her_? This is my wife!”

“Not right now she ain’t,” Yancy snaps, and lunges for the K.A.I.J.U.’s throat. Raleigh uses the ensuing confusion to jab a syringe into the man’s arm, and then hangs back waiting for K-science’s latest drug concoction to take effect. Yancy and the K.A.I.J.U. stumble back to the other side of the alley, locked together in a furious tussle for ‘Tracy’s’ attention.

Until the K.A.I.J.U. slumps against Yancy, going suddenly boneless, and Raleigh gives his brother a victorious smile.

“Shut up,” Yancy grumbles. “There was no guarantee that he was gonna take the bait.”

“Tendo checked him out as thoroughly as he always does. You know he’s done all our K.A.I.J.U. personally since Yamarashi, and Tendo’s the best point man LOCCENT’s got for a reason,” Raleigh argues, shedding the woman’s image and helping sling the unconscious lawyer over Yancy’s shoulders.

Yancy shakes his head. “That’s not the point, Rals.”

They’re quiet all the way back to the warehouse set up nearby, walking side by side but not speaking—either aloud or through the Drift. Raleigh hauls open the warehouse doors when they arrive and then steps back, giving his brother a confused look. “Alright, what gives? You’ve been tense since we went under, you know something I don’t?”

Yancy shrugs his shoulders as much as he can. “I don’t know what it is. The dream doesn’t feel quite right today.” He deposits the K.A.I.J.U. in a lawn chair near where Gipsy’s set up, visibly uneasy.

Raleigh laughs it off. “Well, stop. There’s nothing wrong. You’re throwing me off my game, bro.”

“I just wanna make sure we stick to the plan this time. The Marshal’s been riding my ass all week about our performance scores.” Yancy unspools the somnacin lines from their J.A.E.G.E.R. while Raleigh makes sure the other chairs are close enough to reach and slides an IV into the K.A.I.J.U.’s wrist and then his own.

“Our performance scores are the highest of all the active Drift teams, Yance. There’s nothing wrong with the way we do things,” Raleigh argues, settling in his chair and flashing his brother a sunny smile. “Now stop worrying and send us under, man.”

Yancy shakes his head but complies, checking the lines one more time and then pressing the button to send them down into the second layer of the dream.

 

\--

 

Mako has been on the streets for a year when she meets Stacker Pentecost, scraping out a living on scraps of food and whatever warmth she can find at night, fighting off anyone that challenges her. She may be small but that doesn’t mean she can’t fight, won’t kick and punch and claw and bite at anyone who gets too close.

She’s digging in a dumpster in the dimming light of day when he finds her, wearing a sharp business suit with sunlight glinting over the harsh planes of his face, a halo of righteousness around his head. “Hello,” he says in halting Japanese, and she startles so badly she lets the dumpster close with a loud clang. “Are you lost? Do you need help?”

After a moment of studying him, Mako shakes her head. She has nothing left to lose.

“My name is Stacker,” he introduces himself carefully, giving her a perfunctory bow. “I’m here in Tokyo on business, and I need an assistant. We’d pay you well, of course, give you meals and a place to sleep the entire time you’re working for us. You look like you can use a little help.”

Part of Mako bristles at the implication that she can’t take care of herself. Another part whispers warnings about how this is a bad idea, she shouldn’t trust him, doesn’t know what might happen to her if she goes with him. But Mako is hungry, and nothing she can imagine is worse than spending another endless series of nights huddled in doorways for shelter against the biting wind, so she nods and follows him out of the alley.

They walk to a warehouse three blocks over, empty and deserted, and Mako feels a pang of disappointment before Stacker hauls the doors open and she sees the inside. It’s nothing great, but the floor has been swept clean of dirt and there’s a series of space heaters set up around the main workspace in the center of the room. Three lawnchairs are clustered together in one corner, while a pair of tables sit in the other covered with diagrams and scale models and other things she doesn’t know the purpose of. A woman looks up from the nearest table, and when her eyes land on Mako they widen.

“I see you found someone,” she says. Her Japanese is better than Stacker’s.

Stacker ushers Mako into the building gently, shutting the doors behind them and leading her over to the table. He says something in a language Mako doesn’t understand, probably English—they’d been learning the basics in school before she ran away—and the woman makes a face.

“Hello, little one.” She crouches down so she’s at the same height as Mako. “He probably didn’t even introduce himself, did he?” Mako blinks, but before she can come to Stacker’s defense the woman continues. “My name is Tamsin, and this is my brother-in-law Stacker. He’s a bit of an idiot sometimes.”

Mako giggles.

Tamsin brightens at the sound. “What’s your name?”

“Mako,” she responds shyly, and then “your Japanese is better than his.”

They both laugh at that, and Tamsin gives Mako a conspiratorial grin. “I’m better at languages than he is. Part of our job is to blend in with the locals, so we don’t draw attention. Do I sound like I belong here?”

“You could,” she responds truthfully. “He sounds like a Westerner.”

Stacker shrugs when they both look up at him, studying a pair of diagrams with a faint scowl on his face. “I have many talents. Talking in tongues is not one of them.”

“No, you’d rather talk other things, like politics,” Tamsin teases him, finally standing and waving Mako over to a chair at the emptier of the two tables. “Now how about we order some food and explain what we need you to do, hmm?”

Mako nods, settling into a chair and examining the documents in front of her briefly. They’re all written in English, so she can’t make much sense of them, but there seem to be a lot of mazes and pictures of a woman spread around. With a jolt of shock, Mako recognizes the woman in the photos.

She’s wearing blue, always blue, so bright it hurts to look at it even on paper. It’s the Westerner, the one who destroyed Mako’s family and so many others. Stacker and Tamsin are hunting Onibaba.

“Anything,” Mako promises, looking from the Westerner’s photos to Tamsin to Stacker and back again. She will do anything, for a chance to hurt the one who hurt her.

 

\--

 

Mako is Raleigh is Yancy, doubled over with pain and clutching the railing under his hand for support as soon as the dream solidifies, veins flooded with ice and his bones on fire. He staggers under the sudden feeling of ‘wrong’ that pervades the dream, fifty times stronger than it had been just one level up, and tries to breathe.

Raleigh’s concern trickles through over the Drift—he can feel Yancy’s pain, however distantly, and wants to know what’s wrong—but he’s distracted by their K.A.I.J.U. and Yancy doesn’t want to alarm his little brother more than necessary.

The milling projections are staring at him, and when Yancy forces his eyes open one of them reaches out a hesitant hand. He shakes it off, pushing love and assurance and _I’m fine, focus_ through the Drift. Raleigh, standing on the other side of a luxurious yacht on the arm of their K.A.I.J.U, sends him a last anxious look before nodding and turning his attention to the scumbag next to him.

Without Raleigh’s direct attention, the pain triples and Yancy suddenly can’t breathe around the scream caught in his throat. It feels like he’s being ripped apart, every molecule of his dream-self repelling the others, pain unlike anything he’s ever felt before. It’s not like dying in the dream, a sharp starburst behind his eyes and then waking up again. This is worse, lingering, every inch of him overtaken. Yancy collapses to the ground.

_Rals, finish the mission, I love y—_

 

\--

 

Mako reels in the Drift, unable to process what her brain and senses are telling her, still half convinced she _is Yancy, is suffocating and seizing and dying and no one can do anything to stop it because no one knows what’s wrong_ , and then Raleigh gives a shout and a gunshot echoes in her ears, and she heaves upright with a panicked gasp.

 

\--

 

She reaches for her totem on automatic, curling over the steel warmth of the figurine her father had forged for her, an old world samurai in full armor. Raleigh is talking, mumbling apologies and reaching for her with shaking hands, but Mako can’t handle being touched right now. She runs nerveless fingers over the samurai and tries to remember how to breathe.

Raleigh, surprisingly, understands. He settles his weight at the end of her lawn chair, just far enough away that she has to stretch out her legs to touch his back, a sentinel against Tendo and Newt’s incessant questions. “Give her a few minutes,” Raleigh snaps, and they back off.

Mako breathes. In. Hold for five. Out. Repeat. Clutches the samurai close, traces the familiar curves and welds of the metal. In the dream, it’s always icy cold. But right now, it’s warm from being carried around in a pocket all day. She’s not dreaming. Slowly, her heart settles and she remembers who she is. Mako Mori, warrior and survivor, fire and steel and ash.

When she looks up, Raleigh is turning a coin over in his hands and giving her a patient smile. “C’mon,” he says gently. “Let’s talk.”

He leads her out of the testing room hand in hand, promising to give Tendo a full report as soon as he can. Newt looks ridiculously grumpy at that, like he can’t believe he’s being denied the gift of knowledge at a time like this, but wanders away muttering something about going to find Hermann.

“So,” Mako starts when they’ve settled on the bed in her room, when she feels like she can speak again, when all the pieces have tumbled into place in her head. “Yancy was poisoned.”

 

\--

 

As it turns out, Stacker and Tamsin don’t need her to do all that much. They’ve already got a plan, done all the research and set the dates. What they do need, however, is someone to stay awake and watch the clock while they ‘dream’ with the Westerner and steal a bunch of secrets from her mind. Mako doesn’t pretend to know what they mean by ‘dreaming.’ It’s more than enough to know that Onibaba will get what’s coming to her and that Mako is allowed to help.

She stays out of sight when they bring the Westerner to the warehouse, already unconscious, and set up Coyote Tango’s systems. Stacker runs over the instructions with her one more time, then he and Tamsin slip into the dream.

Mako watches the clock.

She’s supposed to wait until the timer reaches 09:30 and then play the music Stacker has queued up on his iPod. This is, in theory, not difficult at all—they’ve gone over it several times and Mako has no problems working the technology—but around the five minute mark Tamsin starts twitching in her sleep, her face creasing with pain.

The timer hits 7:05 and Tamsin groans, 7:22 and she’s seizing in her lawn chair, twitching and flailing and screaming uncontrollably. Mako panics, because this is not good, they didn’t cover what to do in this kind of situation and she has no idea how to help.

At eight minutes and counting Tamsin jerks upright, eyes flying open. She lets out a bloodcurdling shriek, hunching her shoulders and clawing the IV out of her wrist with frantic fingers. “Get it out, get it out, _get it out_ ,” she snaps, and as soon as the lead drops to the ground she’s halfway across the room and digging for something in her pocket.

Mako trails after her, noting how unsteady Tamsin is on her feet, how her skin is too pale and almost translucent. “Tamsin-san, what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Tamsin breathes, staring at something in her clutched hands. “I just—it felt like I was being ripped apart. From the moment we got in there, the dream felt _wrong_.”

Behind them, the alarm Stacker had set— _just in case,_ he tells her, _because we can’t afford to get these things wrong_ —starts shrieking and Mako is momentarily torn between staying with Tamsin and finishing what she’s been asked to do.

“Go,” Tamsin says, still staring into her hands.

Mako goes.

 

Later, when they’ve gotten the Westerner back to her mansion and Stacker drags Tamsin to the hospital, when he’s packing up the warehouse and Tamsin is still in for observation and Mako is trying to find the best time to slip away before he can tell her she’s unwanted anymore, Stacker turns to her with a sigh.

“The doctors think Tamsin was poisoned,” he says gravely.

Mako gasps. She can’t think of anyone who would want to poison Tamsin, beautiful vibrant Tamsin with a laugh that makes her feel all warm inside.

Stacker nods. “They’re keeping her for a couple more days, to make sure there aren’t any lingering side effects. But they think it’s pretty much flushed out of her system.”

“How?” Mako asks, small and confused.

“Coyote Tango. This isn’t the first time we’ve had J.A.E.G.E.R. tech be sabotaged, and I guarantee you it won’t be the last. We’ve got a rival company, known as the Wall, that have been trying to make sure we can’t do business for years now.” Stacker shakes his head, takes a seat on one of the lawn chairs and waves Mako down beside him. “We’re winning the fight for now, but if they keep using tactics like the one today the PPDC won’t be able to keep up their Drift team numbers.”

“Can’t you just find new team members?” Mako wonders. She knows that Drift teams are the ones that go into the dream with a K.A.I.J.U., or Key Access Integrated Jockey Unit, and that it takes two people working in tandem to keep the dream stable. She doesn’t know a lot, but Stacker is a good teacher and he’d shown her the basics of what they were doing.

But Stacker shakes his head. “No. Drift teams have to have compatibility—it’s not just any two minds that can support a dream. And it’s not just dreaming together, it’s feeling what your partner feels, hearing their thoughts _inside_ the dream. Not everyone can handle that kind of connection.”

“So…you felt it? What Tamsin was going through?” She latches onto the idea, how horrible it would be to feel someone else’s pain and be unable to do anything about it. Mako resolves not to let herself get put into that kind of situation. She’s barely sharp enough to keep herself safe, how is she going to protect another person?

“Yes, I felt it. That’s why I woke her up.”

 

\--

 

Raleigh startles next to her. “How do you know that?”

“Tamsin,” Mako says gently, staring at the photograph on the back of her door. It had been taken just after Tamsin got out of the hospital, so she’s a bit paler and is leaning on _Sensei_ for support, Mako in front of both of them with a ridiculously huge grin on her face. _Sensei_ had just told her that they wanted to take her with them, give her a home and a place among the PPDC operatives. Raleigh nods—he probably has the memories floating around his mind now. “ _Sensei_ got her out before it did too much damage, but she got really sick after that. Neither of them were allowed to dream again.”

“I didn’t know what was happening,” Raleigh mumbles, like the words are being dragged out of him.

She knows, has seen it in his memories, in the impressions of Yancy that are burnt into Gipsy Danger’s A.I. “The Wall,” she says simply. “Somebody fed poison into Yancy’s IV and when you went into the second layer of the dream, it was just too much for his body to handle.”

“But when you die in the dream—”

“Raleigh,” Mako asserts. “He didn’t die in the dream.”

She can see it in her mind’s eye, the flash of disorientation as Raleigh finished the mission and the timer ran out, waking up and stumbling over to his brother’s prone form without thought for anything else, the choked out “ _No_ ” and then numb disbelief. Yancy’s body had still been warm when Raleigh reached him, and if it hadn’t been for the absolute stillness of his chest he could’ve just been asleep. His lips had been blue, so blue, and the veins spreading out from the lead in his wrist had been tainted inky black.

Raleigh shakes his head, undoubtedly remembering the same thing. “I tried to go back and look for him,” he admits quietly. “Had to steal Gipsy to do it.”

Mako remembers that too, the absolute outrage of the J.A.E.G.E.R. techs when they discovered that the machine under such close examination had been taken. It was returned the next night, with no note or explanation, and the entire tech division had been up in arms. From the look on Raleigh’s face, though, she suspects that the subterfuge had been worth it just because no one was willing to let him near a J.A.E.G.E.R. after Knifehead.

But she understands what he was looking for, knows it on a fundamental level that has nothing to do with the memories now crowding in with her own. “They didn’t know, for a long time, what happened to people’s minds when their bodies died while dreaming,” she explains in an undertone, PPDC secrets spilling from her lips so easily when normally they’re locked away tight. For all her years of studying and technical experience, Mako hadn’t understood before what it meant to Drift with somebody. She is half in love with Raleigh already, with his suffering and strength and ability to move past the greatest trauma of his life. It wouldn’t be hard to fall the rest of the way. “But after K-Knifehead, the Wall got smarter. They put the poison _in_ the somnacin solutions, instead of feeding it into the IVs separately. Killed a lot of Drift teams that way, until Newt figured out what was going on and started checking everything over personally before teams were deployed.”

“That’s why the K-science department is so small now.” It isn’t a question.

She nods anyways. “Yes. Newt was the only one they could trust unreservedly, so when the PPDC nearly went bankrupt he was the only chemist asked to stay. It was much the same way with Hermann.”

“Why?” Raleigh asks. “What happened with the architects?”

“They were leaking maze designs.”

“Oh.”

Mako sighs. “We’ve still got all the J.A.E.G.E.R.s, you know. Romeo Blue, Horizon Brave, Vulcan Spectre—they haven’t been destroyed.”

“But Pentecost said—”

“The Marshal told you about the ones that still have active Drift teams,” she asserts. The distinction grates on her, just as it grates on _Sensei_. “We tried to find new Drift teams to replace the ones lost, but it didn’t work. All the cadets came out of the dream terrified, convinced their J.A.E.G.E.R. was haunted and refused to have anything to do with it.”

“What are you saying?” Raleigh asks carefully.

Mako almost smiles. Almost. “I’m saying that while your brother is dead—truly dead—his memory is not. It lives on in Gipsy. That’s why the Marshal asked you to come back—we don’t have the money to build new J.A.E.G.E.R.s, and none of the ones we have will work without their original operatives.”

“You’re—”

“I’m saying that you’re our last chance for keeping the PPDC running. We’re hitting the Wall in five days—CEO, Vice Presidents, everyone we can get. We’re taking them down. _Sensei_ promised me a spot on the team if I had someone to Drift with.” Mako stares up at Raleigh, at the quiet strength of him, and dares to hope. “Raleigh. Please.”

He knows what this means to her, has seen it in the Drift—despite her rough introduction to the PPDC, despite all her work and years of service, Mako has never gone on a mission before. Raleigh looks back at her, clearly thinking, and gives a single nod. “Yes. Yes, always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Acronyms and other notes!
> 
> PPDC -- Pan Pacific Dreamshare Company -- a crime syndicate specializing in the illegal use of dreamshare technology. Clients wanting to employ their services can take out a contract on a K.A.I.J.U.  
> J.A.E.G.E.R. -- Judgment Awareness and Emotion Gifted Evaluation Robot -- this world's equivalent of a PASIV. Has two control leads for a Drift team and a third lead for the mark, allowing the teammates to Drift within the dream.  
> K.A.I.J.U. -- Key Access Integrated Jockey Unit -- the mark or victim of a contract. Drift teams go into their minds and extract their secrets for whoever took the contract out.  
> J-tech -- the division responsible for building/maintaining all the J.A.E.G.E.R.s  
> K-science -- half chemists researching new somnacin compounds, half architects designing mazes for a variety of missions, this division is responsible for making sure that Drift teams have all the materials they need.  
> LOCCENT -- a group of pointmen, working to make sure Drift teams have all the information they need.  
> The Wall--an enemy company that has slowly been destroying the PPDC's avenue of business by a variety of methods, including militarizing potential marks, infiltrating the Shatterdomes, and sabotaging tech.
> 
> In other news, I definitely am not already planning out another fic in this universe, because that would be ridiculous.


End file.
